


A Tree Swinging

by inalasahl



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Community: spn_reversebang, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-05
Updated: 2012-12-05
Packaged: 2017-11-20 11:24:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/584886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inalasahl/pseuds/inalasahl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam's arm starts changing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Tree Swinging

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to bibs for the beta.
> 
> The amazing art that inspired this story is by sagetan. [You absolutely have to go and praise it.](http://sagetan.livejournal.com/22539.html) I was extremely fortunate to have been able to claim this art, and to get to work with such a talented and kind partner. I only wish I could write a story as good as something this beautiful deserved.

> There is a tree swinging and voices are in the wind's singing, more distant and more solemn than a fading star.  
>  —T. S. Eliot, The Hollow Men

Dean was much as Castiel remembered. It had not been so very long since they were together in purgatory and though Dean, like Castiel, was not so much stripped, but _honed_ he was fitting himself again to this place, this existence. He ate cheeseburgers and listened to music and killed the monsters he found — he did the things he enjoyed, because he found them enjoyable and worthwhile.

But Sam. Sam talked of plans and "when we're done" and stared out the window. Sam was driven to do what was necessary, what was right, but he seemed to take no joy in it.

He was staring again. Castiel worried.

"Sam, how have you been?" Castiel asked when Dean left to use the restroom. Sam startled, pulled from some reverie.

"Fine," Sam replied, looking up from his plate. "So …"

Castiel understood small talk. Was unsure, though, whether Sam would prefer to discuss the weather or sports. "So." Sam turned to the window. Castiel saw a child clutching tightly to the leash of a hyperactive dog. "What are you thinking of?"

Sam didn't turn back when he answered. "Nothing, really." In the reflection of the glass, Sam's eyes were hollow.

* * *

Sam put his hand to his temple and tried to massage away the headache he could feel coming on. His head felt like it was stuffed with straw. Castiel was staring at his reflection in the diner window. Maybe it was his imagination, but Castiel looked uneasy. Sam didn't know how to reassure him. The sky was fading into twilight outside the diner window. The street lights were coming on, creating colorless pools of deepening shadow in the nooks and crannies of the street. Soon it would be impossible to see the street outside for the lights inside the diner. Sam's attention was drawn to a woman crossing the street, glancing behind herself every few seconds as she scampered away, twitchy and hurried. She pulled her coat closer, and he frowned as he realized a man was following her. Something in his movement seemed unnatural, and Sam didn't know what he was, but it wasn't human. "Dean," he said, nodding toward the window. He pushed at his brother to move him out of the seat. Sam got up, knowing Dean would be behind him as soon as he counted out the cash for the check and the tip. 

He hurried out into the street, tracking the woman and the man. Dean had the knife, but Sam had a few weapons stashed on his person. As long as it wasn't demons, he'd be fine.

He got around the corner just in time to see the man stab the woman with a branch of some kind, which made it doubtful she was human herself. "Hey," Sam shouted. The man took off running. Dean came skidding along behind Sam. "Get him," Sam called, pointing to the man.

"Call," Dean agreed and ran after the other man.

Sam caught the woman as she fell, gently lowering her to the ground. "Hang on," he said, pressing his hands to her chest to slow the bleeding. He heard Dean tear away after the creature who had attacked her.

"It is too late," she murmured. "The stake has done its work." She grabbed Sam's hands, pulling them away with inhuman strength. Her voice was drugged, blissful. "Do not despair. Were you not sent for this? Our meeting must be fated. There are so few who can carry the blessing, but here you are when the need arises." Turning his left palm face up, she pressed a seed pod into it and curled his fingers around it. "The tree must survive," she said. The seed pod fizzled against Sam's hand and he gasped, opening his hand again in time to see the pod, leaf and all, melt into his hand.

"What did you do to me?"

She looked up at him. "Plant it where the —" She coughed, and Sam saw red lightning growing around the stake. It spread around the woman and he stepped back, throwing his arm over his eyes to block the light. There was a bright flash and when he opened his eyes, the woman lay dead at his feet

"Sam!" Dean came thundering back into the alley. He stopped. "She's dead?"

"Yeah. Did you get him?"

"Ass leapt atop a two-story building. Castiel went after him. We'd better get out of here." He nudged Sam. "You all right?"

Sam stared at his hand; the palm still tingled. "Yeah, I'm fine. It was nothing, I guess." He could already hear sirens in the distance. He wiped his bloody hands on the inside of his jacket. "You're right. We should get out of here."

* * *

At first, Sam thought he had accidentally slept on his arm again. He no longer woke choking, but he still dreamed sometimes of bitter cold and would tangle himself up in the bedsheets until he couldn't move. His hand felt strangely weighted as he lifted it to shake it out.

His second thought was that the hallucinations were back. He bit his tongue to keep from calling out for Dean who he could hear (if his ears could be trusted) brushing his teeth in the bathroom. If he was hallucinating again, he didn't want Dean to know. "Cas," he whispered. He felt the breeze on his face even as he heard the flutter of wings.

"Sam?"

"Am I, am I?" He held out his arm.

"Sam," Castiel rasped, voice like dry grass. "Your hand. What happened?"

"What?" Sam broke off, didn't know how to ask. But Castiel had been in his head. He wouldn't be shocked. "What does it look like?"

Castiel reached out, traced Sam's finger tips, green, light brown and very bendy. "Like long buds," he said. He studied Sam's hand for a moment longer. The wood, there was no other word for it, completely took up Sam's whole hand and long streaks of it shot down Sam's wrist, blending into the flesh of his skin along his arm. "New branches." 

Sam drew a deep breath, relieved at first, until the realization set in. If he wasn't hallucinating, then something was very, very wrong. "Can you?"

Castiel touched two fingertips to Sam's forehead and closed his eyes. Nothing happened. "I cannot heal you," he said, eyes widening. "I can't — it's like there's nothing to heal."

"What do you mean?"

Castiel sat down, eyes fixed on Sam's hand. He seemed to be searching for words. "We cannot transmute matter," he said finally. "When I tried to heal you, it felt like there was nothing wrong. That you were in the shape you were supposed to be. That your hand was, down to the celestial level, a tree. Fraxinus excelsior," he said. "Common ash."

"You recognize the kind of tree?"

"I feel it," Castiel said. "Like I recognize all things." 

Sam held his arm out, thrusting it into a broken column of sunlight from the window so he could see it better. "You mean I've been cursed."

"No, curses feel wrong. This feels. Not wrong." He closed his eyes and placed two fingers on Sam's hand again, and Sam could tell he was straining to no effect.

"What's up, Cas?" Dean asked as he steps out of the bathroom and noticed the angel.

"Your brother called me," Cas replied.

"Sam?"

Wordlessly, Sam held up his hand, letting Dean get a good look. He wondered if it was his imagination that made the curse look as if it had gained another half centimeter on his arm.

"What the hell happened? I was only in there for ten minutes."

Sam could see that Dean was already blaming himself somehow. "You're allowed to shut the door when you're in the bathroom, Dean," he said irritably.

"Not if you're going to turn into a tree."

"I'm still me," Sam said. He flexed his fingers to prove he could, though the sensation was odd, dulled.

"Great." Dean turned to Cas. "Get with the mojo then."

"He already tried to heal me, Dean."

"Well, you can't stay like that. What if it gets worse? What happens when your heart or your brain becomes a block of wood?" He rounded on Castiel again. "Do you have any idea of what this could be?" Dean demanded.

"Calm down, Dean."

Castiel tried to answer his question. "There are things that soldiers do not need to know." Curses were not generally one of them, but humans were endlessly inventive. It was possible this was a new curse, invented just for Sam.

"But not all the angels are soldiers, right? Like cupids."

"Not all angels are soldiers," Cas agreed.

"Cas?" Dean's jaw was tight.

"All those I might have consulted are dead," he said. Castiel didn't need to say by his own hand. "I do not believe those who are left would help."

"I know you've got a thing about not going back there, and I understand, I do. But —"

"I —" Castiel looked at Sam. "I will try."

It had been two years since Castiel last went home. An eye blink in the way that angels account time. Castiel would be ashamed to return at all asking for help were it not for Sam. He reminded himself that it was hard facing Dean, too. Harder still to face Sam and what he'd done to him. Compared to that, facing his brethen should be much less difficult. He was a soldier. Born to face difficulty untroubled, to face danger with such courage that it felt like indifference.

He heard the singing first as he spread his grace, reaching out his wavelength. He could feel their eyeless sight on him as he landed in the human parts of Heaven. He pulled the shape of his vessel around himself and waited. There was a tree swinging in time with the song of the breeze, and the stars twinkled like persistent embers in a way that reminded him of the Winchesters and their resilience.

Between one sway of the tree and the next he found himself in a room of light, facing Naomi at her work. "Castiel," she said irritably. "You were supposed to wait for my summons."

It took a moment for his memories to return and when he recognized her he had to quench the anger that grew hot in his breast. "I am to report to you anything of importance, am I not? Sam Winchester has been afflicted, and I cannot heal him. He —"

"He will be fine. For a few days, anyway. This is … you broke the order of the universe, you and the Winchesters. We do not control everything anymore. Some things are out of our hands."

"You know what it is? How do I cure him?"

"There is no help here for Sam," she reiterated. With a flick of her hand, he was tumbling back to the Winchesters and before his shape has even coalesced his memories were overwriting themselves. 

Only ten minutes had passed when he returned to the Winchesters, but the thought of telling them of all he had talked to raised a frisson of irritation in him. He knew he should be able to explain, but for some reason he just couldn't. He settled for the most important fact that came easily to mind. "They will not help."

"That's it?" Dean asked, and Castiel tamped down the bare thread of impatience the questions caused.

He clasped Sam's shoulder. "I am sorry, Sam."

"Dicks," Dean said, crossing his arms and sitting down heavily on a bed. "While you were gone, Sam here decided to share a little something he forgot to mention before." Dean quickly filled Castiel in on what had happened to Sam the night before. "Tell me you caught that guy last night."

Castiel shook his head. "I tracked him for hours. He was very good at staying ahead of me, and then Sam called."

"What was he?"

"I do not know."

"There can't be many things that can stay ahead of an angel."

"Not many," Castiel agreed. "Not for hours. A powerful being like Death or Fate, maybe."

Dean rubbed the back of his neck. "Fine. Then that's where we'll start. Someone in the god-killing game that could outrun you and use curses."

"You think I'm cursed?"

"Your hand is a block of wood! Hell, yes, I think that's a curse, Sam."

Sam tensed, and Castiel looked at Dean from the corner of his eye. He did not like to get in-between the brothers, but Castiel remembered how distant and drawn Sam had been the night before, even before all this had happened. "Dean …"

"Don't you start."

"A witch couldn't do something like this."

"We're going to need books," Sam said into the quiet. "I don't think the internet is going to cut it for the kind of research that we need to do."

"Fine. Cas can fetch our library. In the meantime, boot up your laptop anyway, Sam. That woman had to come from somewhere. Chronos had a life, maybe she did, too."

* * *

The three of them searched all that day and the next, but could find nothing helpful. As the hours passed, the curse spread up Sam's arm, and it grew heavier and heavier, the finger joints becoming less and less flexible, less sensitive until he could no longer type or turn pages with his left hand. Dean seemed to be looking at his arm every fifteen minutes, no matter how often Sam told him he was fine. Castiel tore through his books zealously, reading faster than Sam could track, growing visibly frustrated with each passing moment.

Sam closed the book he was reading. "I'm hungry," Sam said. Dean looked up. "I'd go get something, but I think I'd raise a few questions, at the moment." Sam waved his arm. "Can you go get something for us?"

As soon as Dean was out of the door, Sam turn to Castiel. "I hope you know that I appreciate everything you've done for us, Cas. For Dean and I."

"I haven't always —"

Sam forestalled him with a raised palm. "We've all done things we regret, Cas. What matters is how we go forward. I know that it hasn't always been easy for you, and these last few weeks you've really been a good friend to Dean. I'm glad. He's going to need that, you know." Sam looked down. "I'm glad you care about him. That you two are close. If we can't fix this, you're going to have to keep an eye on him."

"I would do my best. Dean is my friend, Sam. But I'm your friend, too."

"I know that. I just meant," and Sam's lips quirked. "Your profound bond has always been good for him."

"Dean and I have been through many things together. Knowing him has been like having my garrison back, but different, stronger. Because when I was a soldier I didn't — I couldn't — _feel_ appreciation for it the way I can now. You taught me, you especially, Sam, you taught me things that I didn't even know I was missing."

"I haven't done so much."

"You reached out to me even after I had broken you, Sam. You — you don't even know, do you? What you look like to my eyes. My real eyes."

"An abomination," Sam said quietly. "You told me that once."

Castiel was ashamed. "I was younger then and less wise. Your soul, Sam, is very beautiful to me. You have no idea how it glows, when by all rights, it should be a mangled, dead thing. Your persistence is quite beautiful, Sam."

Sam laughed. "Don't let Dean hear you say that. He'll think—"

"What would he think?"

"That you sound like a chick flick."

"I do not understand what this has to do with infant poultry tossing."

"Cas. I can tell when you're faking." Sam heard a car door slam and knew Dean would be back soon. "Seriously, Cas. Dean's going to need you. Things haven't always worked out for us, free will, fate, it all seems to come out the same. We save the world, but — Fate!" Sam shouted suddenly.

"What?" Dean yelped as he walked in the door.

"The woman who gave me the seed pod. She said our meeting was fated. What if she meant that literally?"

"You mean like that Atropos chick or her sisters put the whammy on you?"

"Yeah, like that."

Castiel growled. "Then they would know the cure."

"Can you take us to them?"

"I can, perhaps, locate them, but I'm not sure it would be wise for me to accompany you. Atropos dislikes me."

"Well, she tried to kill us, so."

"Because of me," Castiel said.

"What?"

"She was trying to get to me. I didn't tell you this before, because," he shrugged. "Because I was —"

"Evil."

"Yes, thank you, Dean."

"How are we going to find her?" Sam asked. "Last time she found us."

"If we altered the timeline again, I believe that would get her attention," Castiel replied. "We could —"

There was a knock at the cabin door. Dean pulled out his gun. There was a louder, more insistent knock. "Before you three morons do what you're about to do open the door," a woman's voice called.

Sam pulled the door open.

"Hello, Atropos," Castiel said.

* * *

"So, what? Just talking about altering the timeline brings you running now?"

Dean had several inches on her, yet somehow she still appeared to be peering down her glasses at him. "No. You think I'm going to go haring off after you three every time you discuss some stupid scheme? But my sister tends to notice when the fabric of the universe starts to buckle under her hands, and I drew the short straw." She tapped a pen against the side of the book she carried and fixed an icy glare at Castiel. "I thought you learned last time not to play around with timelines on that scale."

Sam stepped forward. "Um, we only wanted to talk to you."

She crossed her arms. "Go on."

Castiel pushed himself in front of Sam. "Don't pretend you don't know why. If your sister was watching us as closely as you claim, then you know exactly what's happened to Sam. Tell us how to fix the curse."

"It's not a curse; it's a blessing. It's a chance." She pushed Castiel out of the way and pointed to Sam's arm. "That right there is life. It's a seed pod, a samsara, from Yggdrasil. If Sam manages to successfully plant that seed he's carrying, he's going to get residuals. Trees are strong, long-lived. Look, we've tried to get rid of you." She looked at Dean. "Both of you, but you just keep coming back." She shrugged. "Might as well use that to our advantage. Fix some of the things you broke."

"What do you mean?"

"You have no idea how tangled everything had become. The world can't go on forever. It doesn't matter whether the end comes in two years or two thousand or two billion. But the universe has to have a stopping place and this one passed it's expiry date seven years ago. Sam was always meant to end the world, and now he has. He picked up that hammer and killed Vili. Ragnarok begins with a fight among the gods, with the death of gods. Everyone knows that. _And Odin was dead already._ "

"Lucifer," Dean said.

"Just so."

"And because Sam was Lucifer for awhile?"

"It's almost the same thing. Close enough for the ultimate bureaucracy anyway."

"Wait," Sam said. "Are you saying the apocalypse is coming again?"

"Not like that. The universe just needs an ending and a beginning to reset the clock." She tapped her pen again, and almost reluctantly said, "I shouldn't tell you this much, but I can't have you blundering around. Yggdrasil is dying. A new tree must take its place, but there's only two ways for that to happen. Sam can be that tree — put down roots."

"Not happening," Dean said.

"Or Sam can carry the samsara to the root of the dying tree and plant it there. If he finds the right place, it will leave him."

"Where is the right place?"

"I can't tell you."

"Can't or won't?"

"Shan't," she said.

"Sam is dying!"

"The stars are dying. The world is dying. Who's Sam again?"

"So, that's it? You're just going to let the world die?"

"Sam was always meant to bring about the apocalypse. All we've done is put things back on track." She shrugged her shoulders. "What good is a tapestry, if you never get a chance to hang it on the wall?"

"Hey, the world goes, so do you! I may not know as much as you do, but I know enough to know that this Egg tree —"

"Yggdrasil."

"Whatever. That it's supposed to support all the realms. Earth dies, and you go with it."

"Perhaps. Or maybe we'll just start a new tapestry. Shall we find out?"

"But I haven't done anything," Sam said quietly. "I, I haven't done anything. I've tried to be —"

Her smile was gentle with only a hint of bitterness. "Then I guess the poet was right. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but a whimper."

She turned away, and he thought he saw a brief flash of a skein between her fingers. "You have a chance," she said. "Find the root of the tree and plant the samara. Or put down roots yourself. Either way the world lives. You had much less than such a chance before."

"Just tell us where to go."

Her smile was bitter. "You were the ones who liked free will so much." In a blink, she was gone.

"Dammit," Dean said, kicking the bed.

"Dean."

"If the samsara infecting Sam is from Yggdrasil itself, then maybe we can use his arm to do a locator spell."

Dean took a deep breath and began counting off his fingers. "All right. Let's see what we've got we could use and then: shopping trip. Sam —"

"Dean, it's okay."

Dean stopped pacing. "We'll get what we need or we won't. Either way, it sounds like the world is going to be fine, so —"

"You are not putting down roots, Sam. My brother is not turning into a tree."

"If that's what I have to do, I will."

Dean clenched his hands into tight fists. "I'm going to go check the trunk," he snapped. "See if we have what we need for a locator spell or not." He stomped out.

Sam buried his face in his hands.

"Are you all right?"

Sam looked up and smiled at Castiel. "Would you talk to him? He — when he gets protective like this he doesn't listen to me."

* * *

When Castiel went back outside, Dean was staring at the open trunk of the Impala. "Dean, do we have everything?" Dean hastily flicked a tear off of his cheek.

"Sure," Dean said. He handed everything over to Castiel and shut the trunk with a slam. "He thinks he's going to die."

"The two of you put yourselves in danger frequently. I don't think it's a sign that his mental state has deteriorated."

"Not that," Dean said. "The happy thing, que sera sera, accepting zen Sam. He does this every time!" Dean's hand curled into a fist around his keys until Castiel could smell blood. "You don't understand. You weren't there last year when he was going crazy. He must have told me a hundred times he was fine. He —" Dean stopped. "Can you just take that stuff in? I've got to go for a drive. I can't — I'm going to say something I'll regret if I go back in now."

"Of course," Castiel said. He took a couple of steps. "Dean."

"What?"

"Sam needs you right now."

Dean's lip quirked upward and he tossed his head. "I'll keep myself in one piece," he promised. "Just need to blow off a little steam. You can do the locator spell without me."

* * *

When Castiel walked back into the motel room, Sam was half-undressed and staring at his infected arm. He startled as Castiel walked in and started to pull his clothes back on. Castiel stopped him with a hand. "The two of us will do the locator spell, Sam. Dean went to buy pie."

"Pie?" Sam said. He gave a little laugh, indicating he had not been fooled. He looked at Castiel's hand on his arm. "It doesn't bother you? Touching … that."

"It's your arm, Sam. I am concerned that as the infection spreads you will lose your freedom, your sense of self, but taken by itself, as the shape you are currently in, it is not unpleasant. I have encountered far more disgusting plant life. And non-plant life."

Sam smiled. "I suppose angels have a different threshold. Sometimes I forget that you're, well, not you. You've already got something foreign wrapped around you." He let out a half-breath and covered Castiel's hand with his own. "When I was a kid when my dad was proud of me, he'd rub his hand over the back of my head. Dean, he was always grabbing me or shoving me or patting me on the back. Then there was Jess …" Sam's voice trailed off. "I don't know what I'm talking about. It's not like I need to touch people. With my arm like this, I'd probably infect them anyway." He pulled away and finished removing the layers on his top half.

"Sam. With or without touching, you still have Dean."

"I know that." Sam's smile was broad, but Castiel remembered what Dean had said about Sam's happiness, his acceptance. Castiel could not cure Sam, could not give him hope of a cure, but he could give him this one small thing he missed.

Castiel put a hand on his shoulder to pause him. "And you can touch me. You won't infect me." Castiel blinked his coat and the covering on his top half away as he leaned into Sam's space. "You can always touch me."

Sam reached out a shaky hand, supple fingers not yet thick with leaf buds, but already turning firm, like the inner wood of new branches, and ran his hand along Castiel's face and neck in a gentle stroke. Would that same hand soon grow rough, like bark? "Cas," Sam whispered. He leaned forward and pressed his lips to Castiel's forehead and then leaned down further, resting their foreheads together, skin to skin. There was intimacy in this gesture, and not for the first time, Castiel wished he dared reach out a spark of his grace and touch Sam in his own way, unbound by barriers of flesh. 

Instead, he took Sam's unmarred hand and placed it on his chest. "You can touch me," he repeated.

Sam released a shaky breath and lifted his head. "You sound like you're —" He shook his head. "Thanks, Cas." He patted his shoulder. "Everything's going to be fine." Castiel could spend a hundred years with the Winchesters and never understand them, never learn to predict them, but Sam's smile was sadder now, wobbly and less fixed, but it seemed a truer smile to him all the same.

"You're not fine. I wish I could do something to help."

"You are helping." Sam bent down to kiss Castiel's forehead again, and this time Castiel shifted so that Sam's mouth caught on his. For seven seconds, Sam kissed him back and then — Sam shoved him away and narrowed his eyes at him. "Have you been watching porn again?"

"I just felt like kissing you. Isn't that how humans show affection?"

"That wasn't an affectionate kiss, Cas. That was something else."

"I know Dean thinks of me as child. Is that what you think?"

"Last year," Sam began quietly. "I met a woman named Amelia and she was wonderful, exactly what I needed. We got a house. We had a dog. We had a life. I thought I had lost everything. You were dead. Dean was dead. And she —"

"You fell in love with her," Castiel said, and his mind turned briefly to Daphne and how simple things had seemed for those few months with her.

"Yes. But. She wasn't real, Cas."

"I don't understand."

"She wasn't real. I made her up." He huffed. "I didn't even know until I got back together with Dean, and I tried to call her, and I got a veterinary hospital where they had never heard of her. I guess I just really needed …" his voice trailed off, and he shook himself. "But you're real, and I've been a little bit in lo — in awe of you since Dean first told me he met an angel."

"Sam."

"So, I … I just want to make sure we're on the same page. Because I want something real."

"We are."

"I know you feel guilty about breaking my wall, and I don't know. Maybe all of this is just a way of making it up to me."

"It's not."

"Then when this is all over, kiss me again."

"Not now?"

"Not now, Cas." Castiel nodded. He had no expectation, he had never had any expectation — "It's not a no, Cas. I meant it when I'd said I've always been a little bit in awe of you. But we keep running from crisis to crisis, and it never seemed worth pursuing, because — I feel so much smaller than you."

"You've never showed it." Castiel considered for a moment. "Angels are so very empty inside, Sam. Those of us fortunate enough to feel learned it from your species." Sam leaned into him, but didn't answer. Castiel hoped that meant he understood. Castiel put a careful arm around him for a moment, then he turned away and began searching for something to serve as a bowl to mix the spell ingredients in. It would take twelve hours to ripen. The sooner they started, the better.

* * *

When Dean came in, Sam snored softly in the quiet of the room while Castiel wrapped himself around him. "Dean —" Castiel said, untangling himself from Sam gently, so as not to wake him. But then he stopped, uncertain how to proceed. He and Sam hadn't discussed this. "I'm taking his dreams."

Dean snorted. "Right," Dean said sarcastically. "This is going to be a thing now, isn't it?" He toed off his shoes. "He's going to be fine, Cas." Dean said, spitting out each word firmly, but quietly, so as not to wake Sam. "And when this is all over I'm going to kick your ass for whatever the hell it is you're thinking about doing with my little brother." Dean took off his jacket and pointedly flopped down on his own bed.

Castiel smiled and laid himself back down, enfolding himself around Sam. "All right," he said.

Angels didn't need sleep, but Castiel's grace was still odd at times, flaring in and out, and as he matched his vessel's breathing to the swaying rhythm of the Winchesters, he began to dream in his mind's eye, Sam's dreams, so that Sam could sleep. Sam's hand like wood, an infection spreading until there was nothing left. Sam becoming hardened heart wood, putting down roots, tree-like, wrapped in strong branches. Unable to move, unable to pump blood, unable to scream, eyes growing dim, closing. Castiel himself rooted to the spot, unable to help, wanting to scream himself — a lightbulb shattered overhead, and Castiel opened his eyes with a bang to see the two brothers staring at him.

"Cas?" Sam asked.

"Sorry," Castiel said. He blinked, and the glass repaired himself.

"Nightmare?" Sam was troubled.

"I'm fine," Castiel replied. "Go back to sleep. I'll wake you when it's time."

* * *

The locator spell worked perfectly, though they never would have found the place without Castiel's ability to take them anywhere for it wasn't a location that could be plotted or mapped. It just was, a place of of no particular space and of many, where existed Yggdrasil, the roots of the world tree.

It was 5 o'clock in the morning, a twilight morning of winter and of spring. The roots curled all around them, scarred and thick and dying. "What do you have to do?" Dean asked.

"I think I just —" and Sam reached out his hand instinctively and laid his finger to the bare surface of one root, and there was a great tremble in the intent of the universe. Slowly, the infection in Sam's arm began to flow backwards melting into his hand, becoming again a samsara. He deposited it there on the root, and then itself the seed pod began melting into the tree, flowing the roots and the tree began to flower.

Sam began to laugh as the tree burst into life. A shower of samsaras helicoptered down upon them and he caught up Castiel and kissed him on the mouth.

It was wet and joyous and real and so very, very human, and Castiel knew that whatever happened between them, he would feel glad of it.

**Author's Note:**

> Rated for a few kisses.


End file.
